Kevin has served as Chairman of the Board at three companies, including Cybrexa. In addition to the successful launch of Cybrexa, Kevin has played a key role in building and successfully financially exiting two biotech companies.The first was CyVera, which was launched in 2003 and then sold to the gene sequencing market leader Illumina in 2005. The second was CyVek, which was launched in 2011 and then sold to Bio-Techne in 2016.Kevin has also spent the last 20 years as the Founder and CEO of CiDRA, a trusted process optimization company to many of the largest companies in the world. He received a BS degree in Business Administration from the University of Connecticut and an MBA from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Before co-founding Cybrexa, Per was President & CEO of CyVek, where in just over four years he led the development, commercialization, and exit of a novel automated immunoassay system that was acquired by Bio-Techne. Prior to that, he was the President of inc.jet, Inc., a startup that led the introduction of thermal inkjet printing in the commercial printing space. Per has undergraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Business, and a Master’s Degree in Management from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Dr. Houston is President and Chief Executive Officer of Arvinas, Inc. Previously, he was the SVP of Specialty Discovery at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). He spent more than 18 years at BMS in roles of increasing responsibility and had accountability for all Discovery Biology disease teams as well as various Discovery technology departments. He was also the site head of the BMS Connecticut facility. Dr. Houston was a member of the BMS R&D Executive Leadership team and chaired the Target Portfolio Committee which had governance oversight in the discovery space. With his teams and research colleagues, he progressed over 200 compounds into early development, several of which advanced into late stage clinical trials, and toward commercialization. Dr. Houston has over 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Prior to joining Bristol-Myers Squibb, he worked at Glaxo Wellcome Research and Development in the UK, where he served as head of the Lead Discovery Unit.
Dr. Houston obtained his B.Sc degree in Medical Microbiology from Glasgow University and obtained his Ph.D. with Professor Brian Catley in Microbial Biochemistry from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. He also completed his post-doctoral studies on an MRC grant with Professor Julia Douglas at Glasgow University.
Kevin is Co-founder of HighCape Partners and brings more than 25 years of experience as an executive in the life sciences industry. He most recently served as President of Shire Regenerative Medicine. Prior to joining Shire, Kevin was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Advanced BioHealing from 2007 until its acquisition by Shire in 2011. Before that, he served as an Executive-in-Residence at Canaan Partners. Previously, he was Co-founder, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a publicly held pharmacogenomics company, until its merger with Clinical Data, Inc. in 2005. He currently serves as a Board Member of Cheetah Medical, Inc. (Chairman), Histogenics Corp., Collagen Matrix, Inc., TELA Bio, Inc., and CURE, Connecticut’s bioscience cluster. Kevin received an MBA from Columbia University and his MS in Finance and BS in Business from the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Ranjit is a physician-scientist and biotech entrepreneur at the Yale School of Medicine. Clinically, Ranjit treats adult and pediatric primary CNS tumors, as well as brain metastases. He also runs Phase I and II clinical trials testing experimental therapeutics at Yale, which are largely based on discoveries from his own laboratory. His academic research has received international attention with major clinical implications, and he is regarded by many as an emerging leader in the brain tumor space. His laboratory has published findings in multiple high-impact journals, including Science Translational Medicine and Nature Genetics. Ranjit received his undergraduate degree in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University, and both his MD and PhD from the Yale School of Medicine. He completed his medical internship, radiation oncology residency, and postdoctoral research studies at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Peter is the Hunter Professor and Chairman of the Department of Therapeutic Radiology and Professor of Genetics at Yale. He leads a highly productive program in cancer research, with more than 160 publications and consistent NIH funding for more than 25 years. A primary thrust of his lab has been elucidating the regulation of DNA repair in cancer and developing novel agents to exploit DNA repair pathways for cancer therapy. Peter received a BA in Chemistry from Harvard, an MS in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford, and an MD and PhD in Genetics from Yale. He has received awards from the Radiation Research Society, the American Society for Photobiology, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Peter was elected to the Association of American Physicians in 2014.
Ensign Professor of Medicine, Professor of Pharmacology, Chief of Medical Oncology, Director of the Yale SPORE in Lung Cancer, and Associate Director for Translational Research at Yale Cancer Center (YCC) and Yale School of Medicine.
Dr. Herbst has worked over several decades as a pioneer of personalized medicine and immunotherapy to identify biomarkers and bring novel targeted treatments and immunotherapies to patients, serving as principal investigator for numerous clinical trials testing these agents in advanced stage lung cancers. This work led to the approval of several therapies (such as gefitinib, cetuximab, bevacizumab, axitinib, atezolizumab, and pembrolizumab), which have revolutionized the field and greatly enhanced patient survival. His work on “umbrella” trials has galvanized the field of targeted therapy and cancer drug approvals at the FDA. Nationally, he is at the forefront of personalized medicine and works closely with public-private partnerships to develop large clinical studies, such as Lung-MAP. The NCI Lung SPORE he leads has identified new mechanisms of sensitivity and resistance to immunotherapy.
Patricia is the Associate Director for Experimental Therapeutics at Yale University. She is also the Principal Investigator of the National Cancer Institute/Clinical Trials Evaluation Program (NCI/CTEP) Early Therapeutics UM1 Grant for Yale University, overseeing four additional NCI-designated Cancer Center UM1 programs. She brings more than 25 years of expertise in medical oncology, drug development, and early-phase clinical trials. Prior to her Yale appointment, she served in numerous leadership roles at Wayne State University’s Barbara Karmanos Cancer Institute, most recently as Director of the Phase I Clinical Trials Program and of the Eisenberg Center for Experimental Therapeutics. Patricia was previously on the Board of Directors for the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) and is currently on the Board of Scientific Council for the NCI Intramural Program.
Ruth is the Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at the Northern Institute for Cancer Research, Newcastle University and an honorary consultant medical oncologist in Newcastle Hospitals Foundation Trust. She is Director of the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre within the Northern Centre for Cancer Care, which is a dedicated clinical trials unit. She leads the Newcastle Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and also the CRUK Newcastle Cancer Centre. Ruth trained at Cambridge and Oxford, obtaining both a medical degree and scientific PhD. Her research interests are in the field of DNA repair and early-phase clinical trials of novel agents or novel imaging targets, taking the first-in-class PARP inhibitor into the clinic in 2003, ATR inhibitor in 2012, and MCT1 inhibitor in 2014.
Leonard has more than 30 years of experience with all stages of drug development, from early discovery through FDA approval. He was a Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of LEAD Therapeutics, which was later acquired by BioMarin Pharmaceuticals where he then served as the Chief Scientific Officer. At LEAD and BioMarin, he worked on the discovery and early development of the PARP inhibitor talazoparib. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President of Research and Development for Onyx Pharmaceuticals from 2000 to 2006. In this role, he was responsible for the co-development of Nexavar through to FDA approval for renal cancer. Leonard received a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is now the Chief Scientific Officer of Vivace Therapeutics, an oncology-focused portfolio-based drug discovery and development company.
